Individuals and businesses face a growing tide of viruses, worms, and other malicious programs (collectively known as “malware”) that threaten the stability and performance of their computers and the security of their data. Unfortunately, due to the increasing sophistication of malware, the amount of effort and energy required to detect and neutralize malware has grown increasingly complex.
Malicious programmers, however, often lack the time, ability, and/or expertise to adequately test the impact of their code on the wide range of hardware and software configurations that exist in the wild. As a result, malware often causes or suffers from a variety of conflicts, incompatibilities, crashes, and other stability problems. This is especially true for non-process threats that attempt to manipulate, modify, or otherwise utilize the functionality of an otherwise legitimate process to accomplish a malicious purpose.
The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies a need for systems and methods that are capable of identifying malware-induced crashes and, therefore, the malware itself.